10.1. Introduction 10.2. Defining Mega-Events, Study Guides, Projects, Research of Design

Download 10.1. Introduction 10.2. Defining Mega-Events and more Study Guides, Projects, Research Design in PDF only on Docsity! 1 Chapter 10 Design of Contemporary Mega-Events Graeme Evans Abstract Contemporary mega-events are a design and political phenomenon, encompassing all scales of design practice and serving as an exemplar of a global imaginary realised in local space. They combine placemaking with national and city branding, manifested through extravagant buildings, facilities, transport infrastructure, logos, uniforms and slogans – all of which present design challenges given their high profile and cost. This chapter considers the contemporary mega-event, specifically Olympics and EXPOs, from their historical evolution (World Fairs, Biennales) to the expansive and controversial events that punctuate the international calendar and tourist itinerary. The design of mega-events is reflected through the iconic buildings and components that make up the visual feast that these events seek to engender – from costumes, mascots and signs, to the masterplans and computer-generated visions that are employed to project the mega-event and site into the future. Keywords: Mega-events, Olympics, EXPOs, London 2012 10.1. Introduction This chapter will discuss the phenomenon of contemporary mega-events and their design and spatial context. Drawing on their historic evolution, this chapter first considers the definitions and distinctions attached to large-scale events, and then introduces their most high-profile aspect, the iconic buildings and sites that these major events occupy, and in some respects create, through grand place-making schemes. The practice of master planning is then discussed, as a new hybrid spatial and communication design process which locates these special events as urban imaginaries (Çınar and Bender 2007) through a convergence of visual and virtual culture. While icons and landscape design themes provide the prime physical experience and impact, a host of design practices are engaged in these major projects – from product design and branding, communication and “experience” design to fashion design – as well as inclusive and sustainable design, in response to the imperatives of accessibility and environmental sustainability. These design practices combine to represent a global phenomenon situated in a local context and this will be critically assessed through examples from recent EXPOs and Olympics, including a more in-depth case of design elements of the London 2012 Olympic Games. 10.2. Defining Mega-Events Writing over 25 years ago, Hall located the rationale for hosting what until then had been termed hallmark events within the fourth era of World’s Fairs running from the early 1960s – 2 namely “the city of renewal” (1992, p. 29). Today’s mega-events are no exception to this now 50 year trajectory, which has hardened in recent years toward major cities hosting and bidding for the “greatest show on earth.” National capitals such as Madrid, Paris, and Tokyo and cultural capitals Amsterdam, Los Angeles, Sydney, Rio, Istanbul, and New York vie for hosting major international events such as EXPOs and Olympics, despite their escalating cost and perennial controversies and dubious legacy effects (Evans 2011). Re-presenting and re- imaging major cities through these mega-events is therefore both a competitive city strategy and a reflection of the “festivalisation of the city” (Richards and Palmer 2010). These once- in-a-lifetime events also present a dualistic challenge to their hosts and commissioned designers – between the temporal/ephemeral nature of the event and the permanent legacy and between the “host” audience and the outside world. The latter includes visitors/tourists, global media, commercial sponsors, and institutional “brand” holders who also impose their design controls on the event organizers. Large-scale festivals and sporting competitions make up the majority of what are considered contemporary hallmark or mega-events. Early studies into the phenomenon tended to view them as simply “special” (i.e. not regular/annual) large-scale events. However, subsequent studies (Hall 1989) identified short-term staged events, such as carnivals and festivals. Such events can be of significant economic and social importance, which may not only serve to attract visitors but also assist in the development or maintenance of community or regional identity (Getz 2012). The term “hallmark event” is not therefore confined to the large-scale events that generally occur within cities and major towns. Community festivals and local celebrations can be described as hallmark events in relation to their regional and local significance. Such an observation highlights the importance of the economic, social, and spatial context within which hallmark events take place. However, the term “mega-event” has far more specific application. Mega-events, such as World’s Fairs – or “EXPOs” (Olds 1988) and the Olympic Games (Ritchie and Yangzhou 1987), are events which are expressly targeted at the international market – global media, tourists, and investors, as well as local and national participants. They also entail major capital investment in venues, facilities, and transport and drive a number of design imperatives. More recently, Müller (2015) has revisited the definitional ambiguity of the mega-event concept which brings together the key factors which distinguish them from other hallmark or special events. In his analysis, in order to be considered as mega-events, they: 1. attract a large number of visitors 2. have a large mediated reach 3. come with large costs, and 4. have large impacts on the built environment and the local–regional population. 5 By the 1930s host nations had also started to use the Olympics as a stand-alone opportunity to advertise their country and regimes, notably Berlin’s “Third Reich” 1936 Games. By 1964 Tokyo was promoting its Games as an important medium for conveying Japan’s credentials as a modern country and for signifying its reemergence onto the international stage after World War II, a strategy later adopted in Seoul, Beijing, Rio, and most recently in Sochi, Russia. Versions of this international cultural diplomacy and branding exercise can also be seen in the football World Cup and other competitions hosted by developing regions such as in the Middle East (e.g. Qatar) and South Africa. 10.4. Design Icons The physical structures and infrastructures that mega-events now demand, offer the most explicit design challenge and impact – notably the new sports stadia, festival sites, pavilions, and associated accommodation (e.g. Olympic Village) – as well as vital transport facilities and associated design and public art installations. Earlier “great exhibitions” had also produced permanent legacies of festival sites, providing examples of that much over-used tag: “icons.” Prime examples include the Eiffel Tower in Paris, named after the engineer Gustave Eiffel, whose company designed and built the tower. Constructed as the entrance to the 1889 World’s Fair, it was initially criticized by some of France’s leading artists and intellectuals for its design, but it has become a global cultural icon of France and one of the most recognizable structures in the world. The Eiffel Tower is the most visited paid monument in the world, attracting over 7 million people each year. Other legacies from World’s Fairs include Glasgow’s Kelvingrove (1901), national stadia, and the more prosaic convention centers such as in Knoxville, USA, Brisbane and Vancouver. In London, the Festival of Britain of 1951, conceived as “a tonic for the nation,” was a self- consciously forward-looking event that sought to offer a break from rationing, austerity, and the landscape of a bomb-scarred country. It sought to present a picture of the future, a mini- expo of the esthetics people had to look forward to. It was one of the first examples of culture-led urban regeneration (Evans 2005). The Skylon – a symbolic if non-functional rocket-shaped structure – was the icon for the festival, a dynamic symbol with a name derived from a blend of “nylon,” “pylon,” and “skyhook.” It was demolished on the orders of Winston Churchill (the Labour government-commissioned Skylon was seen as a symbol of socialism). The Festival of Britain also produced its own kind of branded furniture: anatomical-shaped tables, chairs, and plant stands: “these minimalist masterpieces were made from cheap plywood and vinyl: Britain’s effete but endearing contribution to modernism perhaps” (Heathcote 2011). The South Bank is the physical legacy of the Festival of Britain, occupying the stretch of former industrial riverside near Waterloo. It has since grown to embrace the 6 giant Ferris wheel of the London Eye in the west all the way to the Globe Theatre and Tate Modern – now the most visited modern art museum in the world – in the east. At its heart is the Royal Festival Hall, arguably the first modernist structure to be truly adopted by a city that once seemed hyperconservative but is now apparently in love with the contemporary, and designed by the London County Council’s chief architect, Robert Matthew, who assembled a team of young architects (Heathcote 2011). Ernest Race and Robin and Lucienne Day also came to prominence during the Festival. Race created furniture, including the iconic Antelope chair and the Days were integral to the design of the interiors of the Festival Hall, with Lucienne’s textiles and wallpapers displayed alongside Robin’s steel and plywood furniture. In contrast to today’s mega-event symbols, the Festival’s logo, designed by Abram Games – featuring Britannia adorned with red, white, and blue bunting – also became evocative of the period. Since the 1960s, contemporary mega-events have been dominated by the permanent sports stadia, associated housing and transport, and often dubious “public art” erected to inject a sense of fun and play into these functional and impervious buildings. More temporary structures are designed for pavilions such as those that make up the national promotion at EXPOs, although host country pavilions are often the more extravagant and expensive and therefore remain as permanent legacies of the EXPO site, anchoring the subsequent site redevelopment. As questions of sustainability intensify around these hugely costly projects, the use of novel temporary structures is seen as one solution to the after-use conundrum (with many sports facilities seriously under-used after the event) and sustainability question. So as well as tents, toilets, and warehousing, the basketball arena for the London 2012 Olympics was designed to be fully recyclable, and was dismantled in 2013. Mooted to be sold to the 2016 Rio Olympics – it is however still pending sale for £2.5 million five years later. The formula adopted for successful host cities, since the hosting of these events is the outcome of intense competitive bidding over several years, typically focuses on the design of the main venues - in the case of the Olympics, this includes the main athletic stadium and also some of the specialist stadia such as the Aquatics Centre and Velodrome, and in the case of EXPOs the host city pavilion. In both cases the themed “village” and “park” surrounding the main venues make up the rest of the mega-event site, served by new or upgraded transport stations and systems (e.g. light rail, metro). It is here that architectural design is used to create the prime image of the event through keynote buildings and landscapes. Although highly functional buildings, designers have sought to create signature buildings that provide a “wow factor” and a degree of excitement that these new sports stadia otherwise lack until actually in use. Examples include Herzog de Meuron’s “birdsnest” stadium for the 2008 Beijing 7 Olympics and Zaha Hadid’s Aquatic Centre for the London 2012 Olympics. The use of starchitects (Ponzini and Nastasi 2011) therefore parallels the earlier grands projets and cultural icons built to rebrand and market a place, or an entire city (Evans 2003), as part of longer term regeneration, such as the Guggenheim Bilbao, where Frank Gehry’s art museum franchise is synonymous with the revival of this industrial port city (Plaza 2006). Over- reliance on a single brand can also risk image decay as the brand dilutes, so as Bilbao’s Provincial president Josu Bergara said, with no hint of irony: “Other cities will have to find their own projects, not copies of the Guggenheim” (Crawford 2001, p. 2). Giddens reinforces this view: “Money and originality of design are not enough … You need many ingredients for big, emblematic projects to work, and one of the keys is the active support of local communities” (in Crawford 2001). In practice, however, the political and financial imperatives that drive these mega-events produce a top-down approach with local communities “consulted” (informed), but ignored in terms of location decisions, design, and after use of facilities (Evans 2015). It is no coincidence, therefore, that the same roll call of international architects feature in these mega-event schemes, with often similar issues arising, i.e. copycat architecture, high cost and cost/time overruns, problems in building, and design faults. This is exacerbated in the case of structures whose original use is subject to change after the event. For example, the lack of a legacy plan for the London Aquatic Centre, designed by Zaha Hadid, has meant that its internal design and operation is less than ideal (and no substitute for traditional municipal pools, several of which have closed in the local area). User access to this center – best viewed from a distance – is also awkward and illegible. A blue film has had to be retrofitted to the exterior windows in order to reduce the glare that meant that lifeguards could not see swimmers underwater. The conversion of the main stadium to a football ground for the incoming West Ham FC cost the public purse an additional £272 million (after construction and design faults), as a result of a protracted adaptation not foreseen when first designed and built. Designed by stadium specialists Populous this 54 000 seat stadium will have cost over £700 million, far more than if it had been designed for this purpose. Further public money has also had to be spent at the ArcelorMittal Orbit tower, designed by artist Anish Kapoor, with a giant slide retrofitted in an attempt to make this attraction more popular – reportedly it lost £540 000 in 2014/15 from 120 000 visitors against a business plan forecast of £1.2 million profit from 350 000 visitors. The high risk associated with the overambitious stadia designs is evident in cost overruns and construction delays, leading to acrimonious disputes. For example, the late Zaha Hadid again, whose design for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic stadium saw the original budget of £707 million rise to £1.37 billion, which led to her replacement and the appointment of a Japanese design firm working with a revised budget of £843 million. 10 In a departure from the norm, the UK opted to commission Thomas Heatherwick for the 2010 Shanghai EXPO to design not a building, but a dandelion-shaped “seed cathedral” covered in 60 000 crystalline spines which were tipped with tiny lights to illuminate the structure. The sculpture won the Bureau International des Exposition's (BIE) gold award for best pavilion design. Each spine contained a different seed from Kew Garden’s Millennium Seed collection in London, an initiative that seeks to collect and conserve 25% of the world’s seeds by 2020. The seed cathedral was dismantled and the rods donated to various charities, schools, and the World EXPO Museum, which opened in 2017, another legacy from the 2010 Shanghai EXPO. EXPO site design therefore tries to respond, often too literally, to these aspirational themes, while national pavilions seek to promote their own cultural identities within these thematic priorities. The UK’s entry for the Milan 2015 EXPO was The Hive, another departure from the standard national pavilion. Reaching 17 m into the air, designed by Nottingham-based artist Wolfgang Buttress in collaboration with engineer Tristan Simmonds and architectural practice BDP, the immersive Pavilion was manufactured and constructed by York-based firm Stage One (Figure 10.2). Fig. 10.2 The Hive, Milan EXPO The Hive was an immersive, multisensory experience inspired by research into the health of bees. This aluminum structure draws visitors into the space via a wildflower meadow, as though they were worker bees returning to the hive. The wildflower meadow sought to build understanding and appreciation of these habitats, and their significance for insect pollinators. Hundreds of glowing LED lights brought this 40 tonne lattice structure to life, while a symphony of orchestral sounds filled the air with an atmospheric undercurrent of buzzes and pulses. Triggered by vibration sensors within a real beehive back in the UK, the sound and 11 light intensity within the pavilion increased as the energy levels in the living hive surged, giving visitors an insight into the ever-moving life of a bee colony. The Hive was subsequently relocated to Kew Gardens in London. 10.6. Size Matters: Master Planning A feature of contemporary mega-events is their growing scale. As noted already, established festivals have spread their footprint and reach in their respective cities, but it is the expansive regeneration plans and aspirations that now drive host cities and regions to use the once-in-a- lifetime opportunity to create new urban villages, districts, and extensions to the city. The mega-event thus provides a political and financial incentive to accelerate urban development as part of grand place-making schemes to achieve growth for rising populations and for new education, cultural, and play zones for the postindustrial city (Evans 2014). This is seen in the case of Barcelona following the 1992 Olympics and the regeneration of the former industrial (textiles production) area of Poblenou into a high-technology zone. This houses a relocated Pobra Fabra University of Art & Design, connecting the new high-rise Extension area of commercial offices, retail malls, and apartments, in the last piece of the post-Olympics jigsaw. London’s Olympic Park likewise will contain the Olympicopolis development, which comprises satellites of University College London and, nearby, Loughborough University London (housed in the former Press and Broadcast Centre), as well as the London College of Fashion; the V&A Museum and Sadler’s Wells Dance Theatre are also opening satellite facilities between 2020 and 2022. EXPO sites, with a curious legacy of abandoned sites and permanent pavilions, can also take decades before they are fully redeveloped, such as in Lisbon (1998) and the UK Garden Festival sites (e.g. Gateshead and Liverpool), while others struggle to reinvent themselves, e.g. Seville (1992) and Hanover (2000). This German EXPO presented a confused theme that resulted in a little over a half of the forecast 40 million visitors and a deficit of over $600 million. The site continues in its original form as an exhibition site although a new center of information technology, design, media, and arts has been located there. Several national pavilions were retained, but are in a state of disrepair. In design terms, the emerging practice of master planning now leads this spatial design process, within which architecture, landscape, and other design activity is situated and subservient. So while, in the past, architecture would have been the prime design profession providing the design concepts, iconic images, and reputations, it is urban design and master- planning firms that visualize the mega-event and major regeneration schemes worldwide. Gonzales refers to “scalar narratives” of regeneration, and the tension between the need for a “spatial fix,” on the one hand, and the reality that scales are socially constructed and therefore not fixed but “perpetually redefined, contested and restructured” (Gonzales 2006, p. 836), on 12 the other. Master planning therefore seeks to capture spatial design and land use configurations at larger scale than traditional architectural design or even town planning. This hybrid practice –attempting to integrate architecture with planning through urban design – thus follows a hierarchical design iteration: master plan–urban design–quarterization–zoning1 and, only then, individual sites, buildings, and structures which populate the futuristic graphics and fly-throughs used to envision and promote mega-event sites (Evans 2015). Batty et al. (1998) consider urban design, rather than urban planning and architecture, to be more suitable for designing at scale, particularly with the advent of computer graphics and Geographic Information Systems (GIS), because, as they argue: “urban design is small-scale enough for many users of urban environments to feel its impact. It is sufficiently broad-based in its influence on those affected that the wider public always have some view of how it might best be carried out. It is less abstract than city planning which exists at larger scales and more populist than architectural design which is remote from those with no formal artistic and engineering training. As such, urban design has the greatest potential of any technologies or practices for involving experts and lay-people” (Batty et al. 1998, p. 3). Cuthbert also reminds us that “urban design is not merely the art of designing cities, but the knowledge of how cities grow and change […] we must go beyond abstract social science into the realm of human experience and the creative process” (Cuthbert 2006, p. 1). The argument here is that the master-planning and graphic visualizations used in major regeneration and mega-event projects provide a better communication and design platform within which complex options, trade-offs, esthetics, and juxtapositions of space, buildings, routes, and their inter- relationships can be presented to the public and worked through in order to achieve an optimum, or at least most acceptable, outcome. This “virtual” design practice, relying as it does heavily on computer-generated imagery (CGI), digital models, and futuristic imagery, also underpins the process of place-making that now drives the urban design and branding imperatives that accompany mega-events. These large-scale, expansive, and expensive projects can therefore be seen as the “stormtroopers of gentrification,” accelerating “new” housing and city extensions and the displacement of residual industry and incumbent communities. For example, Figure 10.3 shows the CGI vision projected for the year 2030 looking south toward the River Thames with the current Hopkins Architects-designed Velodrome bottom left, the main stadium near the middle, and to the left of which is Anish Kapoor’s ArcelorMittal structure, foregrounded by a strip of high-rise buildings making up the Stratford Waterfront (“Olympicopolis”) cultural and education complex. In the far distance is the legacy of an earlier mega-event, the Millennium Dome – or the O2 Arena as it has been rebranded, designed by Richard Rogers. The new housing blocks, yet to be built, represent the 15 Although in the past the uniforms used by Olympic athletes and officials had followed standard functional design, for London 2012 Stella McCartney was commissioned to design the athletes’ uniforms, using abstract patterns of the Union Jack. For the 2016 Rio Games she adopted a similarly traditional Coat of Arms motif: “a hotch potch of British symbolism: three lions hold three fiery Olympic batons; our nations’ flowers (leek, rose, flax, thistle) appear in the center shield; and a crown composed of medals sits up top (symbolising continuity, teamwork and shared responsibility)”. At the bottom, Latin script reads: “Conjoined in one” (Pithers 2016). On the other hand, the launch of the controversial London 2012 logo and the mascots for the Games, Wenlock and Mandeville, led to Stephen Bayley, founder of the Design Museum, to describe the two alien mascots as ridiculous and infantile and the logo a “puerile mess, an artistic flop and a commercial scandal.” International mega-event mascots and logos struggle to avoid both any cross-cultural insults or encroaching on existing designs, reducing them to amoebic cuddly toys, blobs and squiggles (Figure 10.4). Fig. 10.4 EXPO mascots and logo – Shanghai (2010) and Milan (2015) 10.7.1. Inclusive and Sustainable Design The London 2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics sought to create a legacy of inclusive design and accessibility. For the first time, both the Olympic Games and the Paralympic Games were planned together from the outset. The highest standards of accessible and inclusive design were adopted in the London Plan 2011, and inclusivity was embedded in the building of the Olympic Park to create “the most accessible piece of city in the UK” (Firth 2012). Specifically, the legacy of inclusivity encompassed:  “the most accessible Games ever”  a Park and venues designed and built specifically for both Olympic and Paralympic sport equally  a Park and venues designed and built for people from 205 nations. Inclusive design (and the associated “universal” or “design for all”) is a key concept steadily being embraced and culturally accepted, and in a narrower sense promoted in the UK by legislation such as the Disability Discrimination Act (1995) with detailed design and 16 accessibility guidance and practice increasingly available. In principle, it places people at the heart of the design process. As an approach that considers the widest possible audience, addressing the needs of people who have been traditionally excluded or marginalized by mainstream design practices, inclusive design means designing and building places that everyone – regardless of disability, age, gender, sexual orientation, race, or faith – can enjoy confidently and independently with choice and dignity (LLDC 2012). The following principles of inclusive design were thus promoted in the Games (Hickish 2012):  people at the heart of the design process  acknowledgement of diversity and difference  choice  flexibility in use  convenient and enjoyable for all users. In the bid, London committed that the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games would be “the most accessible ever,” and that they would be fully integrated as one. The Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) developed an Inclusive Design Strategy and Inclusive Design Standards (IDS), and also employed a panel of disabled people, and another of inclusive design experts, to offer advice and guidance to ensure compliance with the IDS (LLDC 2012). As a result, the Games’ venues were built to meet the needs of a diverse community and to the highest standards of accessibility with facilities such as: faith rooms, Changing Places toilets (fully accessible toilets that provide more space and adult changing facilities), baby change facilities, and wheelchair user accessible viewing spaces. The parklands and public realm were also designed with disabled and older people in mind, with gradients kept to a minimum, regular resting places, accessible/blue badge parking, and accessible toilet facilities. In meeting the objectives of re-imaging the city, the success of the Games was not just about the sporting events themselves; it was about the whole visitor experience from arriving at the airport to leaving at the end of the trip – or the “whole journey” (Clarkson et al. 2003). A fundamental part of the London experience during the Olympic and Paralympic Games was how visitors were welcomed. The London Ambassadors were key to this, with over 8000 volunteers located in 35 pods across the city: travel, including London airports, railway stations, and tube stations; visitor hotspots (e.g. Covent Garden, Trafalgar Square); and City Live Sites and London Media Centre. The London Ambassador team was responsible for delivering seamless information and support to the visitor. In addition, specific Web resources were provided to help businesses welcome disabled visitors, and to offer comprehensive virtual guides to over 35 000 accessible touch points around London for all visitors (Fleck 2012). The London Games also created an accessible transport legacy manifested by the 17 Accessibility Implementation Plan, which covers London underground and overground transport. Features include lifts, induction loops, tactile paving, platform humps, wide aisles, information points, the spectator journey planner, and Access for All program (Fleck 2012). The original bid also referred to the concept of a “One Planet Olympics,” and this focused on five sustainability themes: climate change, waste, biodiversity, inclusion, and healthy living. London’s Olympic site development included “green” building measures such as water recycling, halving the carbon footprint of all construction projects, and sourcing 25% of each project’s materials from recycled sources. However, as the Games drew closer, “officials noticeably distanced themselves from their original targets, focusing on ‘reducing’ and ‘mitigating’ the carbon footprint of the Games” (Moore 2012). The government’s official Olympic Impact Study pre-Games report using approximately 60 indicator sets had found “below average performance for the environmental outcomes indicators” as well as social outcomes indicators, with gains yet to be measured from Olympic facility life-cycle and energy consumption analysis. While some “green” opportunities such as a wind-powered mill and the use of canals for the transport of supplies and recycling of electricity pylons were not fully realized, steel tubes in the stadium trusses were sourced on the surplus steel market, and the View Tube facility on the Greenway was constructed from recycled shipping containers. Also, the energy center’s combined cooling, heat, and power (CCHP) plant provided heating to the Park, reducing carbon emissions by approximately 20%. Ninety percent by weight of demolition material was to be reused or recycled – over 98% was achieved, largely through recycling not reuse, and 80% of the excavated 1.4 m3 of treated soil was, however, reused on site with several innovative “grey” water recycling schemes installed (Hartman 2012). 10.7.2. Dressing Up London The design of the Games was not limited to the Olympic Park and facilities however, since, in the build-up, a local street design program sought to raise awareness of the event with local people (Evans et al. 2013). The whole visitor experience and legacy of the Olympic and Paralympic Games are highly important in evaluating the success beyond the staging of the Games themselves. The “Look and Feel” program was designed to maximize the benefits to residents and visitors by providing an exciting environment to the Games and building a celebratory atmosphere throughout London. A budget of £32 million was allocated to deliver this program as part of the Olympic public sector funding package, funded from a rate precept on London residential council tax payers. The main objective of the Look and Feel program was to leverage and build upon the pre-Games brand identity to create a distinct and consistent look that contributed to and enhanced the overall experience for the Olympic and 20 different shops and hotels and things like that. Also there are Olympics banners, logos and stuff everywhere. So actually it is community spirit and everybody’s looking forward to the Games. But all that money spent on Olympic banners, that weird mascot, you know, everywhere! Is it worth the money? Waste, waste of money really. (Evans et al. 2013). 10.7.3. Fun Palace It is ironic that, on the very site from which the London 2012 Olympics emerged, a more radical architectural and social design alternative was promised for the public: Cedric Price’s 1964 concept for Joan Littlewood’s “Fun Palace.” This was planned to be located on an “island” site at Mill Meads – now the site of the Aquatic Centre – based on a design model that was prescient in many ways: temporary and flexible, with: “no permanent structures … no concrete stadia stained and cracking, no legacy of noble architecture, quickly dating” (Littlewood 1964, p. 423). Price’s vision was for a “new kind of active and dynamic architecture which would permit multiple uses and which would constantly adapt to change … thinking of the Fun Palace in terms of process, as events in time rather than objects in space” (Matthews 2005, p. 79). The building would have no single entry point and divide into activity zones. Price and Littlewood had assembled a multidisciplinary team from architecture, art, theater, technology, and even situationists, with cybernetics and game theory driving the facility’s day-to-day behavior and performative strategies which would be stimulated through feedback from users. Price’s influential Fun Palace design,4 although adopted at the time by the Civic Trust, was never realized. This marshy site would have been expensive to reclaim – although public funding was of course found for the bottomless finances accessed for the Olympics and ongoing legacy. The Fun Palace idea was also the victim of London’s reorganization into 33 boroughs with the London County Council transferring the open spaces to a new benign Lea Valley Park Authority, with a different perspective on fun – and design. 10.8. Conclusion Contemporary mega-events are creating a new landscape in their respective cities. The practice and primacy of the architect has been overtaken in this field, with the urban designer and master planner creating the canvas within which building, landscape, interior, and product designers compete for attention. Design meta-themes and styles are set at this level, which limits creative scope and individuality, but which nonetheless requires a complex response to these overarching imperatives. There is often no single client, but a range of 21 stakeholders and hierarchy which on the one hand imposes strict design compliance (e.g. logos, color schemes, branding, naming of venues), but, on the other, demands a distinctive creative interpretation of the cultural identity which the mega-event purports to represent. Festival sites have provided often singular legacies in the past, but the contemporary mega- event is both more expansive and expensive – and, as a result, controversial and contested (Cohen 2013; Powell and Marrero-Guillamon 2012). This is evident in cities that have actively chosen not to bid for these extravaganzas, such as Hamburg, Toronto, and Rome, echoing cities that have resisted the Guggenheim franchise. Notwithstanding this reluctance, cities in developing regions, notably the Middle East, vie for international sporting, cultural, and trade events and satellites of national museums, biennales, and institutions. The design opportunities and challenges are high, not least because of the huge budgets involved and the global reach and coverage they can generate, but also because the legacies they produce – physical, recorded, and in collective memory – can be significant and symbolic. 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